


not afraid of all the reasons why we shouldn't try

by lady_ragnell



Category: Der Froschkönig oder der eiserne Heinrich | The Frog Prince (Fairy Tale), Die sechs Schwäne | The Six Swans, Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms
Genre: Body Horror, Fairy Tale Curses, M/M, Post-Canon, Princes & Princesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 04:49:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16422704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/pseuds/lady_ragnell
Summary: The curse on Jan's family has been broken for years, but he's left with a swan's wing and no clear direction for his life. When his sister tells him of Prince Leon, a prince from a nearby kingdom who has just returned from his own curse, he's more than willing to travel and meet him and his new bride, Ida. With Leon and Ida comes Henry, Leon's servant and friend, and together, the four of them muse on curses, the aftermath of them, and just what it takes to get through it all.





	not afraid of all the reasons why we shouldn't try

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lucyhoneychurch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucyhoneychurch/gifts).



> **Warnings:** just to expand on the body horror warning in the tags, there are themes throughout of body changes due to fairy tale curses, and in particular what it would be like to have a swan's wing in place of an arm and what it would be like to have iron rings put around your heart and taken out again (with some implied gore in that second instance).
> 
> Written for **lucyhoneychurch/percentile-perhaps** for a fic-for-donations post on tumblr, with thanks for the donation! The title is from "My Love" by The Bird and the Bee. I am counting this for "wingfic" on my trope bingo card.

Jan is eighteen, and should be preparing himself for going out into the world and seeking adventure, a new life. He's a prince without a country, and he has five brothers who went before him to show the way. Many of them have come back, with lady wives and gold. Frans, second son and third child, is married to a princess and will inherit her father's kingdom. Einar, eldest son, is circling their father's lands like a wolf, looking for an opening to take his place, since their stepmother never did give their father another heir.

And Jan is sitting cross-legged on a nursery rug telling a tumble of nieces and nephews a story that he read out of a book rather than one he's lived.

“And the new queen learned a thing or two about bargains, and a thing or two about how espionage works besides, and in the end I suppose her husband decided that was perhaps more important than using all the livestock feed in the country to make more gold, since they had three more children,” he finishes grandly when Astrid walks into the nursery, recognizing her step coming through the door.

“I suppose this is what Nurse Edda meant when she said there was a history lesson going on,” Astrid says, and is mobbed by all five children, from Gus's eldest, two and barely toddling, to her own Markus, the eldest of them at seven. “Are you filling their heads with stories again?”

Jan stands up. “Historical anecdotes. It's hardly my fault if they make good stories. Are you here for me, or for them?”

Astrid smiles at him. She's a little worn, with a spring sickness sweeping through the land and all the difficulties that brings to a ruler, but she's just as lovely as she's always been. “Can't I be here for everyone? I do want to speak to you, but I have a few minutes to spend.”

“I'll be here waiting, then.” He makes a grand gesture with his right hand. Some people can bear to see him treat his wing like an extension of his body, but she feels what she thinks is her failure every time, so he keeps it held against his side in her presence as much as he can.

Astrid turns her smile from him to her children and her nephews, asking them about their lessons and Jan's story. She's turning into quite the castle matron, and it sits well on her. She wears the ring of keys on her belt with grace, better than she ever bore the lumpy bag of spinning. The crow's feet just beginning at the corners of her eyes suit her much better than the wild, hollow-eyed look she so often wore when she couldn't speak for herself and her life was falling apart around her.

Her hands are still scarred with the memory of six years of welts and stings, and he's the only other one who still bears a mark from their trial. He thinks it makes them closer than they might have been otherwise, as the eldest and the youngest of the family.

“I need to speak to your uncle, and you all, I think, have some work to do, so I'll send Nurse Edda back in and you'll all behave or you won't get a song to get you to sleep tonight.”

Jan swallows his smile. None of the children will ever be musical, because they love Astrid's faithful lullabies and don't know that her singing is enough to make a nightingale drop dead of horror. But the songs are another relic of those six silent years, and her children love them, beg for them, even Markus, who's starting to be old enough to reject some childish things and pretend to be mature.

They're all solemnly swearing to behave, which they even might with him not around to bother them, and he offers his arm to Astrid to escort her out of the room, where Nurse Edda is already waiting to take her charges in hand.

She leads him to her solar, and none of her women are there, chattering and embroidering. There are no silks, no yarns, by Astrid's chair. She's learned to whittle, and while her women busily sew and spin and weave to care for the people of the palace, she makes spoons for the kitchen, and handles for tools, and a hundred other things that the people find useful, if amusing. She sits, and doesn't pick up her tools. He sits in one of the chairs with a bright array of threads laid out next to it, gingerly. The solar is the women's world, and he and his brothers are only invited when Astrid wants to speak seriously to them.

“What have I done, then?” he asks, with his easiest and most charming smile.

Astrid frowns at him for a long moment, long enough to make his stomach pitch like he's at sea, though he tries his best to keep his smile steady. “Are you happy? Here, with the life you lead?”

It's too neat an echo of his own thoughts. He's been chafing for months, thinking about the adventures it will be harder to have because he's so recognizable, because even after years there are things it's hard to do alone when caught between bird and man. He's a decent hand with a sword, but has trouble cooking over a campfire and cutting meat without getting feathers in his food. Adventuring, from what he's heard from his brothers, is more of the latter than the former. The exciting parts are outweighed by all the camping. Unless there's good company along, it's hardly worth it.

“Why do you ask?” he returns, wary.

“Because I don't want to keep you here if it feels like a cage, and because if you want to go, there's a job I think ...” She purses her lips as though she's trying to consider her phrasing. “A job I think you would be uniquely suited for,” she finishes at last.

Jan can think of few jobs that he would be uniquely suited for without sarcasm or fear, and he doesn't think Astrid would suggest any of them. Most days, she's more sensitive about his wing than he is. She might, in fact, be the one person he would trust those words from. “And what kind of job is that?”

“Diplomacy. You're charming, and you're smart, and … the particular visit I would like you to make, that Hans and I would like you to make, is to a kingdom that has recently regained its heir after years without him. He's come home in great pomp, with a bride at his side, and his land's military might is well-known. Making an ally of him could help us, and it could help Einar, too.”

That does sound interesting, interesting enough to make him sit up in his chair, but Astrid still sounds hesitant, like there's something she's keeping back. “And why me, for this visit, rather than someone more experienced? Does he have a sister you're hoping I can marry?” He hopes not. He's not made for marriages of state.

“No, nothing like that.” Astrid's lips curve into a wry smile. “You see, he was gone because he'd been turned into a frog.”

*

It's not quite an adventure, not the way Jan's brothers have had them in the years since they became men again. They went off alone, with a horse and a hope and a promise to write home when they could.

Jan leaves with a royal writ and position, a retinue, gifts to bestow on the royalty they're visiting with the excuse of being wedding presents, and a lot more pomp and to-do than he'd really like, but as he's an official ambassador, he can't really complain about it. He sleeps in tents but doesn't have to cook on the road, or drag firewood awkwardly on a length of canvas since he has trouble picking it up and carrying it. It's not a quest, but it's something to do, and he travels through forests and across fields and around lakes that he only ever saw from above.

There's a flock of swans on one of the lakes when they pass it, and he catches all the men with him looking at him, not even pretending they're not, like they're wondering if he's going to take flight then and there. The light bones in his wing ache with the desire to, but he can't fly anymore. They travel on.

After well over a week of riding, any sense of adventure that remained has worn off, and Jan wonders wryly if his brothers have left out a word or two about how sore you get after a day in a saddle even if you ride well, and how tiring it gets to eat somewhat singed meat caught while traveling every day, once the bread runs out.

It's a relief to stop just outside of city gates and indulge in the polite royal fiction that the guards can't see them until they've had a chance to bathe and put on clothes fit for being received by royalty in, at least Jan and the members of the delegation who know what they're doing. They all know he's mostly there to try to befriend Prince Leon.

The city turns out to greet them, or really to stare at Jan. He's used to that, though it's been long enough since he was somewhere new, at least with this many people, that he'd forgotten the fear and the fascination people can't shake, even when they ought to be greeting him as visiting royalty. Jan tries to keep his back straight, and smiles and waves with his right hand as they pass through the city.

The king receives them on the steps of the castle, and he jolts a little when he sees Jan, not quite enough that the crowds will see, but enough that Jan can't mistake it. He looks tired and a little queasy, like he's seeing what his son's fate could have been, if his own curse had been broken improperly.

“Prince Jan,” he says, and the queasiness is smoothed off his face so Jan can pretend it was never there. “I welcome you and your attendants to my home. You're welcome guests, and I look forward to building a stronger relationship with your home.”

Jan makes all the proper polite noises and presents the ambassadors who will be doing actual negotiating, as well as offering a beautifully hammered gold chain for the king, the first and most public present he'll give, to impress the people gathered around to watch. The king is gracious, and the first ordeal is passed: Jan is shown inside and to the rooms where he and his men will be staying.

“My son has offered to show you the castle and grounds, if you aren't tired after your travels,” the king says once they're there. “His bride will join you as well, if you're willing.”

“I'll be pleased to meet them both, and to see more of where I'll be staying.”

The king nods, a little awkward. Jan has truly frightened him, and he would apologize if it wouldn't embarrass him. “I'll send them to you in an hour, then. I believe he's drilling with the knights, but he should be ready by then.”

*

Prince Leon turns up at the door so close to an hour later that it must have been timed, giving a hearty knock on Jan's door. He's a tall man a year or two older than Jan, a perfect brawny knight with a warm smile and a handshake that doesn't presume that Jan is delicate. There are no remnants on him like there are on Jan, no memories his body forces on him, but he's quietly elated in a way Jan recognizes from his brothers, in the way of a man who's recently shaken off a curse.

“I've been looking forward to your arrival since I heard you were coming,” he says, all frankness, and his obvious assessment of Jan's arm doesn't sting in the face of that. “I'd heard of you and your family before, of course, but I can't say I felt a personal connection before it happened to me.”

“You had it worse, I think,” Jan says, testing. “There's not much romance in being a frog.”

To his relief, Prince Leon laughs at that and steps into Jan's room, clearing the way for two people. One is the wife, perhaps not quite as old as Jan, and a strange shock of a woman after mostly knowing Astrid and her scarred hands. The princess is small, as delicate and lovely as if she was painted on paper, with a dress that hasn't seen work, but her smile is honest too. “Ida would agree with you,” says Prince Leon. “Ida, Prince Jan. Your highness, my lady wife.”

Jan takes that as his cue to sweep a bow and kiss her hand, using the courtly manners that Astrid and Hans drilled into him but that no one uses at their court. “Princess Ida. It's a pleasure, and my sister passes on her compliments to another woman who saw the end of a curse.”

Princess Ida smiles at him with charming dimples. “I'm pleased to have the respect of so formidable a queen, and of course to make your acquaintance.”

“And this is Henry,” Prince Leon says, just as grandly but without any indication as to why he's here standing in Jan's doorway or what his position in the palace or the kingdom is.

Henry, when Jan can see past Prince Leon and Princess Ida, is a workaday sort of man a few years older than he is, with broad shoulders and a ducked head and a shy smile. He moves a little tenderly, when he bows, like he's had a recent injury, and some gauntness to his frame when it looks like he should be as strong as an ox only confirms it. “Your Highness. I'm the prince's manservant, and I'll be glad to help you as well, should you need anything besides delivered meals and cleaning.”

“He's also my friend, but he doesn't like to say that. Feels it's improper.”

Jan sneaks a glance at the princess, but she seems nothing but pleased at everything that's just happened. This Henry probably isn't her husband's lover, then. “Pleasure to meet you, Henry. I will try very hard not to shock you by befriending you, unless you'd like to be befriended.”

That seems to strike the right note with Prince Leon, anyway, who laughs and claps Jan on his good shoulder. “Come on, then, I'll show you everything that's interesting, which isn't very much unless you're interested in tapestries.”

“They're very well-made, you can't blame me for being interested in my new home,” says Princess Ida, a complaint with a story behind it, and Jan offers his arm. She takes it without blinking an eye, but then again, for a woman who kissed a frog, a swan's wing coming from a man's shoulder must not be much to care about.

Prince Leon leads the way, walking backwards much of the time and chattering away, steering away from walls and obstacles with ease and never running into people because they're all fond of their prince and scatter out of his way. Ida is quiet—she's still new to this home, after all—but she does chime in about a few of the tapestries, some of which tell stories from history and others from fantasy.

When Leon forgets something, after two lost years of things changing, he turns to Henry, who trails dutifully along with their little group even though the quick pace of the tour seems to pain him. He always seems to have whatever answer his prince is looking for, but he winces every time the questions come.

The tour ends in the garden, where there are large indulgent beds of flowers in between the vegetables and herbs, and where Leon leads them to a little decorative pond with a few benches. “Quietest place around,” he explains to Jan, waving around the secluded little area, surrounded by ivy trellises to make a screen. “Come here if you ever need to think, and if any of us are here, we can pretend the others aren't here.”

“It's always good to have a place to think.” And it's a kind and thoughtful gesture, too. Jan likes people, to be around the noise and bustle of them, but sometimes he wants quiet for the same reasons he wants noise, and it's hard for visiting ambassadors to find quiet and privacy. “Though I don't wish to invade your space.”

“You won't,” Leon assures him. “I think you and I will be friends. How could I begrudge a friend?”

Jan can't help a smile. “You know, I think I agree.”

*

It's less than a day before he finds himself back at the pond. He likes these people, and their kingdom, and has no trouble talking about politics, especially in the early stages where no one is mentioning military support or claims to kingship or other difficult things. Still, the people at home are used to him. They've known him since he was still young, and the oddness of his wing has worn off with time, especially when they had Astrid's voice and her living children to marvel over.

Here, Jan is a novelty. People try not to stare, they have manners, but the king still seems unnerved by him, and the servants stop whispering when he gets close enough to hear whispers in a way that hurts, much as he would like to ignore it.

After a morning and a lunchtime of being polite, it's a relief to go to the garden, especially knowing that Leon is out for a ride and Ida is cloistered with her mother-in-law, who has thus far mostly ignored Jan, and her two young sisters-in-law, who are too young to eat with the politicians at a banquet but who he will probably meet during the family dinner he's been invited to.

Henry is there, and Jan draws up short before he calls himself a snob. Henry is Leon's friend, and has just as much right to a moment of privacy as a prince. Probably more.

Jan feels even worse when Henry stands up. “Your Highness, I'll leave you alone,” he says, which is worse yet.

At home, he's friends with many of the servants, legacy of being the youngest of six motherless princes and allowed to get into all the mischief he could invent. The friendship of people most princes might scoff at did a better job at keeping his mischief from turning dangerous than any amount of scolding could have. He's not about to start being snobbish now. “You'll do no such thing. I imagine you get few enough moments of peace that you must treasure them. We'll sit here in companionable silence unless you wish to converse.”

“I do treasure them, sir.” Henry sits down again, gingerly. Jan would dearly love to ask what hurt him, but he has no right to be nosy.

The pond is peaceful to watch. It must get a flow from somewhere else, because it's moving a little, not stagnant. It's too small for fish, except for the decorative ones that a good frost would kill but that some people insist on having just for the show of it, and they seem to have chosen against those. It's a beautiful, tame space, nothing like the wild waters of Jan's childhood, the lakes he swept over with two wings, skimming the cold surface of the water just for the joy of it.

When Jan next looks at Henry, Henry is watching him, though he averts his eyes when he sees that Jan has noticed. “You can ask whatever question it is,” Jan says, as gently as he can. He's heard what he imagines are all the questions in the world about his wing. If he can still understand the language of the beasts, as though there is such a thing, as though they don't live beyond need for words. If he hates it. If it hurts him. If he wants to fly, or if he can fly, somehow. If he's thought of removing it.

Some of the questions are worse than others. He hopes Henry asks one of the better ones.

“I've heard that the bones of birds are lighter than ours, to make it easier to fly. Do you have trouble balancing?”

Jan blinks. “That's what you were wondering?”

Henry shrugs. “I was wondering many things, but most of them would be boring questions for you and the answers wouldn't do me any good. That was among them, though.”

Interesting. Henry looks like a shy, plodding kind of person, loyal but dull, but there's more in him than that, it seems. “You could have asked anyway. Most people do.” Henry frowns, brows drawing together, and doesn't answer. “But yes, I have trouble balancing, or at least I used to. I don't notice the difference anymore. I learned how to fight this way, and eat, and a hundred other things. At this point I would probably be off-balance if I had two arms that weighed the same.”

“If most people ask the questions, you must be tired of them. Prince Leon is very tired of delicate questions about eating insects, I can tell you that.”

“I imagine he must be.” Jan goes back to staring at the pond. It's easier than trying to read Henry's reactions and figure out just who he is, in himself and to Leon. “I do plan to discuss it all with him while I'm here. I was sent for negotiations, of course, but also to be a friend. I had my brothers, even if my curse has lasted longer than theirs. He has … well, you, I suppose, and his bride. But there's something different I can offer him.”

“I'd hoped you would.” That's surprisingly frank, and Henry only waits a few seconds before he adds something even more so. “Do you ever miss it?”

Jan still dreams about flying, about flying as a flock, before his brothers peeled off one by one to seek their fortunes. “I don't regret that the curse was broken,” he says carefully. “I miss not being caught in between, though.”

Henry is definitely smarter than he lets on at first glance. He knows what answers Jan isn't giving him.

They sit in silence for another quarter hour or so until Henry quietly excuses himself, leaving Jan to his contemplation of the pool. It's not quite as peaceful on his own as he'd hoped.

*

“I have been gently ordered by both wife and manservant to talk to you today,” Leon says the next morning, when there's no business for Jan to do and he's whiling away the time in the castle's library, which has a lovely new variety of books he's never seen before. The library at home is mostly histories and agricultural texts, but here there are poems and political treatises he could sink into for a few weeks, or even longer.

Leon has the same affable cheer that he's displayed since Jan's arrival, but there's something sober in his eyes that makes Jan stand up. “I think I can arrange tea in my rooms, where we might be more comfortable and more private.”

“Just what I was hoping you'd suggest.”

They talk of nothing much while they travel through the castle, waylaying a servant on the way with an order for tea to be brought to Jan's room. Once inside, though, Jan is left with a conversation that Astrid has faith in him to have but that he has no way how to begin. Even worse, Leon seems to have no idea how to do so either, and they fidget in silence for a little too long before Jan thinks of Henry's questions, and why he might ask them. The words fall into place, even if they're not delicate. “Are you missing it?”

“That's the worst part, isn't it? Everyone you love so glad you're free, so glad to see you human and home, and part of you is still where you were before. I'm just as glad to be free, but I don't want two years of my life erased.”

Jan sighs his relief. He doesn't know what this conversation could have been if he'd had to drag the confidences out of Leon. “I only knew my sister and my brothers, who had all been involved in my curse, but my brothers all want to forget it, these days. I'm a bitter reminder.”

“I almost wish I did have a reminder. My family wants to forget it. Ida, much as I love her, found me very distasteful. Henry … it isn't fair to him to talk about that time.”

“And why is that?” That's pure nosiness, and Jan knows it, but he can't help the curiosity. There's some mystery about Henry, and something that makes Jan want to solve it. Even if the answer is just that he and his prince were once lovers, he'd like to know.

“He was broken-hearted. Took me to Ida's kingdom when I asked, foolish hopeful romantic that I was, and visited whenever he could, whenever it wouldn't be dangerous. He … there's a witch he spoke to, who helped him at the time, but it caused him pain that lasts even now. I can't say more than that. But he went through as much as I did, and perhaps even more, because now he doesn't even get sympathy for it.”

There's something a little rueful in his face, regretful and embarrassed all at the same time, that Jan thinks might answer the question of if they were lovers or not. It is embarrassing, he thinks, to be loved without being able to love back. Astrid wore just such an expression for a long time, when she was too busy worrying about her brothers to care much about her new husband.

Henry, though, isn't the point of this conversation. “He doesn't get sympathy, and you don't want it,” he surmises.

“I'm better now than I was before I was a frog,” Leon says with what seems to be complete candor. “I know myself better, and my duties. I would have been miserable staying that way forever, but in a way—in many ways—it was the making of me. Every prince ought to be turned into a beast in the years where he's behaving beastly anyway. We may lose a few years of battle training, but we gain experience in other ways.”

That's a perspective Jan hasn't heard, even from Einar. Einar has only ever chafed at the loss of his place as heir, at the loss of his kingdom. But would he be so fierce a general if he hadn't been the leader of their flock? Would Lars be such a cunning warrior if he hadn't learned patience waiting to dive for fish? Would Gus have his wanderlust, if he hadn't seen landscapes from above for so many years? And what would Jan be, with two arms, without a childhood spent in the sky? “You could talk to a witch about going into that business, as a service to kings and queens.”

“I'm sure all the kings and queens would be wildly grateful.”

Jan leans back in his chair. “Have you tried telling any of them? They may not understand, but have you tried?”

“My parents, my siblings, they won't hear it. They only weep with joy to have me home again, though my next eldest sister might be thinking of killing me so she can be the heir again. Ida … she tries to understand. Maybe even can, in the abstract, once she's over her natural revulsion. She might understand better if I'd been a buck, or a wolf, or,” he nods at Jan, “a swan. Henry may understand better than most, but as I said, it hurts him. Telling him I learned during a time of pain for him seems rude at best.”

“You should visit my home one of these years. You'd have six of us who'd once been swans, depending on who was home, and you would have Astrid, who ...” She's like Henry, come to think of it. She wasn't cursed herself, but her life became so wrapped around the curse that she may as well have been, and the burden was all on her, because they couldn't save themselves. “She understands in ways most don't. And maybe Henry should speak to her.”

Leon raises his eyebrows. “And maybe he shall, someday. It's kind of you, to think of him and not just me.”

“And don't forget Ida—Hans might have a thing or two to say to her that might be of use.” He'll never love Hans as he should, remembering Astrid weeping silently, fingers bloody, waiting to step onto a pyre because her silence condemned her in his eyes just as it had once intrigued him. Still, if he can speak to Ida, maybe he'll help keep them from living some of the same horrors.

The tea arrives then, on a tray with biscuits and other treats, and by the time the servant is thanked and sent away and they've both served themselves from the generous feast, Leon's serious mood seems to have dissipated. He leans forward across the table. “Tell me, then,” he says. “What is it like to fly?”

*

Statecraft takes up much of the next few days, though Jan is still not quite experienced enough to be of use in most of the proceedings. He still has to be there, as does Leon, and Ida comes too, and shows herself very clever indeed. If Astrid learned how to be a queen from sheer stubbornness and dim memories, Ida must have learned it at her mother's knee, from the way she sits quietly with needlework listening carefully to everything to the way she only speaks during breaks, a gentle word here and there in the right ears to change things to suit her.

“Madam, I salute you,” he says after one such day, when they're all trickling out of the room and down to the banquet hall for another night of smiling politely.

Ida smiles at him, and it would be serene if it weren't for the threat of a mischievous dimple at the corner of her mouth. “I don't know what you mean. You'll walk with me, won't you?”

Jan falls into step with her easily enough, taking a dawdling pace that will let them have some privacy. “Leon spoke to you about our talk, I imagine?”

“I think a state visit in return within the year would be just the thing to suit. Leon and Henry and I, to talk to those who can help us most. It was kind of you to think of us, and not just him.”

“It was him thinking of you. I just happen to know people who might be able to help. And you'll like Astrid, I think.” Astrid won't quite know what to make of Ida, who is a different kind of princess than she ever was, but that's not to the bad.

“I'd be honored to meet Queen Astrid. My mother always said it was awful how everyone behaved in those last bad days, when any fool could see the dowager was jealous of her position.” Ida frowns. “Perhaps I shouldn't have said that. I know it doesn't help, when our hands were tied and no one could save her without declaring war, but there were those of us who believed her. We know the ways of curses.”

Jan swallows, grateful and wrenched and angry all at the same time. That's all more than enough to think of later, though, so he strives for a light tone when he answers. “And yet you didn't realize the frog talking to you was under one? By all accounts, you had to be all but ordered into helping him.”

Ida shrugs. “Well, curses are curses, but frogs are frogs, as well. I could want to help with one while not wanting to share a pillow with another. And at the time, I wasn't thinking about the curse, I was thinking about the symbol of my mother's ancestral lands being dropped down a well.”

That's part of the story he hasn't yet learned. There are always things that go unsaid, to make stories a better tale in the telling. “Tell me about it, then. The way it was for you. The easy parts, anyway, best for walking down to dinner.”

Ida obliges with a tale a little less funny than the one he heard, about an audience with her father's court that went badly, her in full ceremonial dress, carrying the orb that marks her inheritor of her mother's lands, which abut her father's and Leon's and came to Leon's kingdom on their marriage, instead of being bound to her father's by the domestic marriage he'd wanted. She was refusing a marriage, and when she was publicly scolded for it, ran out in all her finery and lost that all-important symbol.

“Everybody has their own little curses,” Jan says when she seems inclined to end the story there. “You, Leon, Henry, me.”

“Your brothers, your sister,” she agrees. “Mine seems small in comparison.”

“But not Henry's?”

She purses her lips. “I think it's shocking, the way he gets treated. The men, the knights, they call him Iron Henry, forever clapping him on the shoulder, calling him a brave and loyal man. Of course he is. But he was hurt, too, and his hurt lasts. They don't like to think about that. It's not a neat ending.”

“I still don't understand how he was wounded.”

“That's not my story to tell.” She looks at him sidelong, with a notch between her brows. “And if you ask, be gentle. That's all Leon or I would ask.”

*

Most days, in between meetings and being charming and pretending he doesn't notice the way people still stare at his wing, Jan goes back to the pond in the garden.

Leon was right about the privacy. Jan can tell who his friends are by who pokes their head in for even a few minutes: a falconer here, resting from his labors for a few minutes, a knight's daughter there, sitting with her embroidery. Henry comes often, though he rarely stays as long as he did that first day, and Leon and Ida themselves are often there. There's a pact of silence, it seems, or only of intermittent conversation, that makes Jan wince for interrupting Henry's peace that first time.

When they run into each other outside the entrance to the little secluded area, both on their way in, Jan expects to exchange nods and enjoy the quiet. Instead, Henry offers an alternative with a jerk of his head at some of the wilder sections of garden. “Did you truly want to sit, or would you like to take a walk?”

Sitting in peace sounds like it would be a relief, but Jan won't pass up the opportunity to know Henry better when he seems like such a mystery. “A walk sounds lovely,” he says. “We don't have cultivated gardens on the castle grounds like this at home, so it's something new, and stretching my legs will be a pleasure. Normally I'm chasing my nieces and nephews around, or out in the woods.”

“I can't do anything too strenuous, but a walk around the cultivated gardens I can give you.”

It's the closest Henry has come to mentioning the constant pain he seems to be in, and Jan raises his eyebrows. “I'll be honored to have a guided tour of the grounds, then. Leon was desultory about it the other day, and I like to be outdoors.”

Henry nods assent and starts them on the path beyond the pond, into an area that's part young woodlot, part garden for the less decorative vegetables that the kitchen needs to feed a castle's worth of people without putting too much burden on the nearby farmers. He dutifully points out the beds of beets and garlic at first, before trailing into contemplative silence. Jan waits for the question, whatever it is that made him offer this tour. “Leon and Ida have both said that you're curious about me,” he finally says.

Jan blinks at the baldness of the statement, but he won't soften or deny it, either. “I am. You're the mystery in the story. Leon is the poor afflicted prince, Ida the brave maiden who saves him. And you, you're a loyal servant, but I don't know what else you are.”

“I was the only person who knew.” A quick glance at Jan, assessing. “And I loved him.” Jan notes the tense even as he's shocked by Henry's ease in saying it. “The combination of circumstances was … painful. He asked to be taken somewhere he might have a chance of breaking the curse, since there were conditions that had to be met, and so I took him to the gardens of Ida's palace, and found a place nearby, where I could stop by every few days and make sure he hadn't been eaten by an owl or something.”

“Did you get a job in the gardens?”

“How could I be sure of getting assigned to the right place? No, I worked scouring pots, and whenever I had a free minute, I went to him.” Another sideways look, but Henry seems determined on revealing something, on telling his part of the story. Jan just can't tell why. “I'd tried to meet the conditions. Leon very apologetically let me try, and then very apologetically told me it didn't work, and most likely wouldn't ever. That it wasn't how he loved me. We're better, now, but it hurt then, and hurt all the worse because it made it awkward when he needed me.”

There are no words for that, for all those secrets coming from a near-stranger. “And sometime in there,” he says when Henry seems inclined to stop there, “you found a witch.”

“I did.”

“You don't have to tell me any of this.” It needs saying, and Jan doesn't want the gift of this story if it's not honestly given. “Just because I'm curious, it doesn't give me a right. I think you know that I've dealt with enough nosy questions to know what strangers do and don't have the right to know.”

“You'll understand, and you won't feel guilty. There are very few people that's true of.”

Jan doesn't talk about his wing with Astrid, because he knows it eats her up inside that she wasn't quite fast enough, that she took the time to live a life, to bear children, in between her work. He doesn't talk about it with his brothers, who are glad and guilty that it isn't them, and all the guiltier for being glad on top of it. Leon has been a relief, that way. It shouldn't surprise him that Henry is as well, and that he could grant the same service to both of them. “What happened next, then?”

“She said that magic takes things literally, sometimes. That if my heart was breaking—not of love, she dismissed that, but if my heart was breaking with fear and dashed hopes and it was making it difficult to help my prince break a curse, she could bind my heart together with iron straps. She warned me that it would hurt in the end, when I was happy again, but that in the meantime, I would be able to go on a little more easily.”

Jan stops walking, his stomach lurching. “She cut into your chest? Put metal around your heart? How did you live?”

“She was right. The magic takes things literally. I could go on with what needed doing and make sure Leon had what I could give him.”

There are a hundred answers to that, and Jan wonders, stunned, why Henry is still a manservant. With that kind of sacrifice, he should be a knight. He should be the richest man in five kingdoms and the richest estate Leon's father can grant. “That's not the end of the story.”

“She was right. It hurt when I was happy again. When Ida broke the curse. The bands broke, made such a racket doing so that Leon thought the carriage was breaking, and had to be removed before they gouged a hole in something.”

Something like his lungs, or like the heart they were meant to be protecting. Jan still can't make himself move, and Henry has stopped and turned to face him too, standing a few yards a way, hunched a little like he always is, like he hurts. They've only been back for a few months. He must be healing, still, after being cut open for a second time to remove iron from his chest. His heart must still feel strained and constrained sometimes.

Jan thinks about Astrid's hands, and Henry's heart, and about curses and how they never seem to land on one person alone.

“They should have knighted you for that. They should have done more.”

“Leon would have. But I'm no swordsman, and no rider of horses, nothing a knight needs to be.”

“Except brave.”

Henry tilts his head, acknowledging the point. “Except brave. But I didn't want anything but the life we'd had before, at least then.”

“And now?”

Now, it seems, he's reached the end of Henry's candor. He's told it all to someone who understands what hell he's been through and is far enough from the situation that he can pretend at impartiality. “Now I have time to think about what I want.”

“It's taken me five years to even begin, and I hope it will take you less.”

Henry's mouth tilts up, a shadow of a smile but a true one. Whatever he's been through, he hasn't lost his sense of humor. That will stand him in good stead. “I think I'll come up with something sooner than that. Now, do you want to see the orchard? It's one of my favorite parts of the garden.”

Jan knows when to back off. He smiles and gestures for Henry to lead the way, careless enough to use his wing even though its movements usually startle people.

It doesn't startle Henry, and it's a good feeling, a piece of home, to know he doesn't need to be careful in that way.

*

After a frustrating day of discussions where Leon's father skirts around committing to military support for Hans and Astrid, let alone Einar, Ida asks Jan to dinner in their rooms. Jan jerks his head at Leon, who's having a low-voiced conference with his parents. “Is that a good idea?”

“We are not our countries. And Leon is a hothead and agrees with you. I'm the one you have to convince.” She puts her hand on his arm. “No politics tonight. No curses, either. Just you and Leon and Henry and me.”

“That I can agree to wholeheartedly. Do they know I'm coming?”

“Of course they do. I wouldn't have invited you otherwise.”

Leon joins them after a few more moments, giving them a weary smile once he's out of earshot of his father. “Sorry about all of this, even among allies this kind of thing is messy,” he offers, patting Jan's wing lightly as he would his arm, not seeming to notice the feathers. Ida glances at him, sharp, like she's waiting to see if he'll object, and Jan makes a point of not doing it. “We'll come back tomorrow and fix it, you and I. That's what princes are for, right?”

“Right. And in the meantime, your charming bride has told me I'm having dinner with the two of you and Henry and that we're not going to discuss it at all.”

Leon beams at Ida, brimful of affection. “Well, she is wise in all things but especially in things like this, so that's just what we'll do. Henry's getting dinner, darling?”

“He insisted,” says Ida, with a speaking look, and the three of them start off together.

Henry is already waiting when they reach Leon and Ida's rooms, setting out dinner on the table. He looks up with a smile when they come in. “Gossip in the kitchen says you're all mortal enemies now, so I assume Ida and I will be presiding over a sword fight or something tonight?”

Jan smiles, surprised at the lack of formality. He hasn't spoken to Henry since that all-too-honest conversation in the gardens, but perhaps it means that they're friends now, truly so. “Not mortal, quite. Though it may be a disagreement to be solved with a state visit from your heir to my home.”

Henry smiles, and Leon laughs, and Ida rolls her eyes, and somehow, that erases all the awkwardness altogether. Henry sits at the table with them and lets them serve themselves, even Jan, though people he doesn't know well always try to help him and only frustrate him more. They talk about Jan's brothers and a cousin of Leon's who went away across the ocean years ago and seems to be involved in some adventure to do with a giant, and about Ida's upcoming visit to her mother's lands to introduce Leon as her husband to the important people there.

“And perhaps to visit our allies as well,” she says with a solemn wink at Jan, who just laughs and pours himself another glass of wine.

There isn't a great deal of merriment at home. There's happiness, and fun with the children, but few nights of sitting around a table laughing with wine and conversation about nothing important. Having it now, and friends his own age who don't see him as just the youngest and most unfortunate of his siblings, is an unexpected blessing.

In the end, when he yawns and admits that if he wants to be sharp in the morning he needs to sleep, Henry stands up with him. “Your room is on the way to the servants' quarters, so I'll go along as well.”

“You could have a very nice room anywhere you please,” Leon says lazily, but doesn't seem inclined to object beyond that.

Henry is quiet as they walk, and Jan doesn't make conversation, too busy smiling over the evening, and wishing for more like it. There's warmth in his family, but maybe, after five years, it's time to seek not just warmth but joy. Some of his brothers have found it with wives and their families. He's finding it here, and wants to stretch it to every part of his life that he can.

“I'm going to be sad to go home, when this is over,” he finds himself saying outside the door to his room, and Henry stops in the hall, frowning. “I love my family, but sometimes I envy my brothers their ability to go out easily and adventure in the world on their own. I can do many things, but not quite that, and aside from all that I'll miss all of you.”

“You're welcome whenever you want to travel. Leon and Ida can't come to you as often, seeing as they're the heirs, but you could come back. Anytime you like.”

“I probably will. But I'd also like to go out and see the world, from ground-level and as a man rather than a child.”

Henry nods, still frowning. “You'll find a way to. I hope you will, anyway.”

“I hope I will too.”

*

After negotiations the next day, which go much better than the day before and allow Jan to win at least consideration of Leon's country involving itself in Einar's attempts to secure his place, if not a commitment. It's better than Astrid warned him to expect, if not as good as she allowed him to hope for.

“Come on, let's go to the pond,” Leon says when it's over. Jan glances over at Ida, who's in the middle of an involved conversation with the financial expert Jan brought with him in his train, a kind man only a little exasperated to be babysitting an inexperienced prince. “Just the two of us, she's busy and Henry's gone out for the day.”

“I'd be glad to,” says Jan, and lets Leon talk about the tournament he'll be taking part in when he goes to Ida's lands to prove his worth as her husband and how nervous he is after two years out of practice with weapons and only a few months back in practice as they walk.

No one else is at the pond, and Leon looks serious enough that Jan wonders if it's design rather than chance. “You like Henry, don't you?” he asks, sure enough, almost as soon as they're sitting down.

It's a baffling question, after everything that's happened since his arrival. “Of course I do. Does he fear that I don't? After our talk the other day—I assume he told you about that, if you're asking—I couldn't do anything but respect him, and like him.”

Leon purses his lips, considering. “Not everyone who hears that story responds with respect and like. Some respond with pity, or even scorn, that he couldn't mind his own emotions well enough to help me.”

“I wouldn't ever say that, or think it. And as for pity ...” Jan waves his wing in illustration. “I've had enough of it to know it's a useless emotion, in the end. I wouldn't do that to him, either.”

“Good. He likes you too, or he wouldn't have told you, at least not as much as he did.”

“I'm honored to call him a friend, just as I'm honored to call you one, and Ida too.”

Leon snorts a little and nudges Jan's shoulder with his own. “Your sister's brilliant plan to tie our countries together with friendship was brilliant, I must admit. I knew I'd like you just because you understand, but I think I'd like you even if you didn't. You're lucky my sisters aren't old enough to marry, or I'd be scheming ways to keep you around.”

“An honor indeed. Though I don't see myself making a marriage of alliance, not like that.”

After a moment of pensive silence, Leon grins at him. “You know, I'm actually glad to hear it. Even if I would have liked the excuse to keep you here, I'd rather have other excuses. Like that of friendship.”

Jan grins back. “Well, you certainly have that.”

*

Over the next few days, dinner with Leon and Ida and Henry becomes the norm. Jan and his delegation are no longer a novelty, to be feasted with banquets, so the castle goes back to its rhythms, and Jan is free to speak to his friends as much as he is to do politics. Those are easier too, now that they all have the measure of each other, and Jan is amazed by how much he learns: from Leon's father, canny and experienced, from his own men, assigned to be tutors as much as helpers, but also from Ida, with her quiet socializing that does as much good as a twenty-minute speech, and from Leon, with the patience to wait for just the right moment to pounce, a trait of both the lion he's named for and the frog he was forced to be for years.

From Henry, over dinner, he learns the politics that don't happen in the negotiating rooms. He learns that this powerful noble sleeps poorly and shouts at the maids, and that that tax collector is known to skim but is allowed to keep his position because he's so dishonest that he's practically honest about it.

“You might as well run a training school for princes here,” Jan says one night, after Ida has confirmed a particular piece of gossip. “I'm a better diplomat now than when I arrived, for certain, and even if I'll never have a kingdom of my own, it will do me good.”

“Do you want to be a diplomat?” Ida asks, cutting bread for Henry even as she watches Jan.

Jan shrugs. “I don't know. I think someday, though I'd like some adventures first, if I can get them.”

Leon smiles, perhaps thinking of their conversation. “Well, someday when I'm king and you've had your adventures, perhaps I'll ask for a permanent ambassador from your sister's court. Would that suit?”

Jan thinks of home, his sister and his brothers and the busy lives that make him feel leftover and next to useless, only fit for entertaining children. Then he thinks of how much he misses Astrid's daily presence and his afternoons with the children, and always being home to greet his brothers when they come back. “Maybe someday,” he says. “Not soon, but someday. In between, visits will have to suffice.”

Ida looks at him, and then at Henry, and it looks like she's speaking to him when she says “I think, in the interests of everyone's happiness, visits will do.”

*

“I have a proposal for you,” Henry says the next day, the two of them sitting at the pond again even though it's drizzling, an unpleasant day at best and Jan's shoulder aching with it. Henry's wounds must feel even worse, but he's the one who caught Jan after he had a morning meeting with his countrymen to talk about how much they have yet to do and asked him if he'd like to take a walk.

“What kind of proposal?”

In honesty, he expects to be asked if he wants a companion in bed, even if Henry looks a little more nervous than that would warrant. After all, Jan knows that Henry used to be in love with Leon, that he likes Jan and that they understand each other well. Perhaps he's not sure if Jan prefers women, or if he's not interested, but Henry is a handsome, loyal, and brave man. Jan admires him, and has made that much clear, if not his attraction. “I'm not ready for adventuring,” Henry says instead.

Jan blinks at him. “I know, you're nearly recovered but not quite. Has someone asked you to?”

“No. But I'm asking if you'd like to, and I want you to understand that it can't begin yet.”

That, said in Henry's gentle, quiet voice, is enough to nearly knock Jan flat. He sits still instead, and wraps his mind around the thought, what that future could look like. Adventuring alone won't work for Jan—if nothing else, there are too many places where the visible signs of his brush with magic would mark him out as not to be trusted and he would have trouble getting aid, but he also knows that he would be lonely on his own. He spent more of his childhood with his siblings than any youngest brother has a right to expect, and after the spell was broken, he relied on them still more. Now, it's not so much a matter of relying, but more one of preferring. He likes company, and Henry's quiet, steadfast presence on the road sounds appealing. “How long have you been thinking of this?” he asks, when Henry just watches, waiting for an answer.

“Since I told you.” No need to clarify that further. “Leon has been telling me to live my own life practically since he was cursed. I wanted to wait for something I truly want to do.”

“And having adventures, seeing the world … that's what you want?”

“I could have done that anytime, once I was well enough. But I don't care to see the world alone. Leon and Ida are settled now, they have duties and in a year or two I imagine there will be children, and I had no one else I thought of going with before you came.”

Henry is brave in this too, it seems. Even if Jan had thought of this, thought that loyal Henry would leave his best friends and follow Jan into whatever journeys may come, he's not sure he would have dared to ask, to take the step to change both of their lives. Now, though, Henry is making it easy to be brave in return. “I'll miss my family, if we go, but I think I would miss the chance more. There's no one I would rather have along to keep me company.”

“As I'll miss Leon and Ida and my friends and family here. We'll just have to come through for visits as often as we can. Your brothers do that, don't they?”

“They do. There's no reason to say goodbye to anyone forever.” Henry was brave enough to ask the first important question. Jan must be brave enough to ask a second. “And are you just looking for companionship on this journey, or do you hope that there might be more than that? Something like what Leon and Ida have?”

“I'm happy with the first, but … I do hope for the second.”

Jan answers with a kiss, since they're alone and it seems like it would do more to sway Henry than any words that would come to his tongue. It's a little clumsy, Henry surprised and Jan with only the experience of a kind stableboy who taught him to put tack on his horse with just an arm and a wing to help him, but it's promising too. Henry is just as solid and steady up close as he is from farther away, and Jan could come to rely on that in time, and hopes that Henry could rely on him in turn.

“I have a proposal,” he says when they pull apart, the words coming to him only a second before he says them. Henry, still close, with a warm smile on his lips, just looks at him. “I told you once that I want you to meet my sister. You aren't well enough for a long journey, but would you be well enough to come home with me, and to leave from there when the time comes?”

Henry smiles, and leans in to kiss him again.

*

A week later, Leon and Ida see them off on the castle steps. The king and the rest of the family are returning to their regular lives with every sign of relief, but Leon and Ida are there, smiling, but both of them with tears in their eyes as they say their goodbyes to Henry.

Jan waits a few steps away, giving them time and privacy, until Ida gestures him over, impatient. “And you,” she says, in the fondly scolding tone she usually only uses when Leon is teasing her, “take care of him, won't you? I've already told him to take care of you. But he'll try to explore your home and set back his recovery, or get a chill in your drafty castle, so I'll be sending a hanging for his room—or yours,” she adds with a hint of a smile, “before the winter comes. And we'll come to you when the snow ends in spring, and once we're done visiting you, then you can leave on your adventure. Not before.”

“Give yourselves the winter to know each other, she means,” says Leon, unusually serious even if he's smiling. “No use leaving for the journey and finding that one of you snores and the other complains every time you sleep on a tree root.”

Jan makes sure not to look at Henry, who he discovered just last night for the first time does snore a little, quietly, just enough to remind Jan he's not alone. In a week, they've learned much of each other, Henry's scars compared to the joint of Jan's shoulder, and Jan's skill at darts pitted against Henry's ability to recite nearly any poem he's ever heard. Still, a winter of learning more doesn't sound like a bad thing at all. “We won't leave before we're ready, and we won't leave without seeing you two again,” he promises, which wins him a more lighthearted smile.

“And then go off and be heroes, as I know both of you can be,” says Ida. “You're much more than all these stupid curses.”

On impulse, Jan kisses her on the cheek like he would Astrid. “We're certainly going to try to prove it.”

“I think you'll succeed,” says Leon, and hugs him, gentle with his wing but firm enough to squeeze the breath from him.

One of Jan's men clears his throat the bottom of the steps, waiting with his and Henry's horses, and they say a last flurry of goodbyes before they descend to start the journey, mounting up and riding away.

Outside the gates, Jan sneaks a look at Henry, wondering if he'll be missing his friends already, melancholy or regretful. Instead, he finds him with the edge of a smile on his face. “What do you think?” he asks. “Do you think we'll prove that we're more than our curses?”

Henry shrugs at him. “I was just thinking that we already have.”

*

Messengers reach home before they do, and Jan is greeted at the gate by a tumble of nieces and nephews, all of whom want to know about his travels and what the frog prince and his princess were like and if he knows anything about the witch who cast the curse.

“You'll have to ask Henry about that,” he responds to that last, and gestures him forward as the whole company of them dismounts. “He was there for the whole thing, and he's staying with us for a while before he and I go off to seek our fortunes in the spring.”

“Is he, now?” Astrid asks from the back of the crowd, and Jan rushes through it to give her a hug, holding on tight and letting her do the same in return. “It seems,” she says more quietly, “that you have a great deal to tell me.”

Jan squeezes and lets go. “I really do.” He raises his voice. “Henry, come meet my sister!”

Henry dutifully appears, already with two nephews dogging his heels. Jan is going to have to find a way to explain to them that they can't clamber on him, that he's nearly well enough for that but not quite, but for now they seem to be keeping their distance. “Your Majesty,” he says, with a perfectly correct bow. “Your brother informed me that you wouldn't mind my presence. I hope it's true.”

Astrid looks at him, takes all of him in. Henry's scars don't show, but maybe she recognizes a kindred spirit in him, someone willing to work to end a curse despite all pain, despite all difficulties. Whatever she sees, it makes her extend one of her scarred hands to shake, not to be kissed, and Henry does as she asks. “I'm glad to meet anyone my brother calls a friend,” she says. “And I hope to know you better, especially if you'll be traveling together.”

“I'd be honored to know you, your Majesty,” says Henry, with another one of his honest smiles.

“Then I welcome you both home, and hope to hear everything about your visit and about your planned travels in the future. Come on, both of you, the rest of the family that's around is inside waiting to see you, Jan, and I'm sure they'll be happy to meet you too, Henry.”

Astrid turns, already briskly leading the way, and Jan falls in behind her, with Henry at his shoulder, the back of his hand brushing against Jan's wing with every step.


End file.
